What the Democrats and Republicans agree on is far more damaging and dangerous than the wedge issues on which they supposedly don’t. We saw that last year with the enactment of Public Law 112-81, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA 2012), which had bipartisan sponsorship and sailed through both House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan majority support. Now acceleratedly close on its heels comes H.R. 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA 2013), which glided through the House with broad bipartisan support on May 18 and is now in the hands of the Senate:

tinyurl.com/6rt9xzt

Attached to that bill is a bipartisan-sponsored amendment summarized as follows:

“Amendment No. 114 – Reps. Thornberry (R-TX) and Smith (D-WA): The amendment would amend the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (known as the Smith-Mundt Act) and the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1986 and 1987 to clarify the authorities of the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to prepare, disseminate and use public diplomacy information [propaganda] abroad and to strike the current ban on domestic dissemination of such material. The amendment would clarify that the Smith-Mundt Act’s provisions related to public diplomacy information [propaganda] do not apply to other federal departments or agencies (including the DoD).”

tinyurl.com/6ndk8lr

The full text of the amendment is assumed to be H.R. 5736, euphemistically labelled the “Smith Mundt Modernization Act of 2013″. You can read that here:

tinyurl.com/7k98kqs

tinyurl.com/7eqx3fl

This amendment legalizes what many think the government has been doing for years anyway: using false propaganda to influence the decisions and control the minds of its own citizens. According to Buzzfeed:

“The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts – the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987 – that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns… The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. ‘It removes the protection for Americans,’ says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. ‘It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false…’ Critics of the bill point out that there was rigorous debate when Smith Mundt passed, and the fact that this is so ‘under the radar,’ as the Pentagon official puts it, is troubling… The evaporation of Smith-Mundt and other provisions to safeguard U.S. citizens against government propaganda campaigns is part of a larger trend within the diplomatic and military establishment… In December, the Pentagon used software to monitor the Twitter debate over Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing; another program being developed by the Pentagon would design software to create ‘sock puppets’ on social media outlets [such as Facebook, Twitter and online forums]; and, last year, General William Caldwell, deployed an information operations team under his command that had been trained in psychological operations to influence visiting American politicians to Kabul.”

tinyurl.com/c78hhg9

DemandProgress.org asserts that “The NDAA amendment legalizing mass propaganda campaigns would remove all distinction between a hostile foreign audience and American one, turning the massive information operation apparatus within the federal government against its own people.” They offer yet another online petition/email campaign to oppose it, but many consider such initiatives to be impotent slacktivism:

tinyurl.com/7lq76h2

Our rapidly accelerating descent into Orwellian police-state fascism will not be stopped or even slowed by signing one online petition or one thousand. And it won’t be reversed at the ballot box, because voting either Democrat or Republican keeps the same corporate-controlled oligopoly in power, and voting any other way is at best an act of defiance:

tinyurl.com/7e57dqe

Our only solution is to take to the streets and quickly – before the drones overhead control our every move, and the droning of TVs and flickering of monitors our every thought.

He may or may not do anything with it; but the WH lawyers are sure fighting awfully hard in the courts to see that it stands. It didn't pass congress, signed by the Prez, and made into law, to NEVER be used.

Thanx Nevada. I'm on the upper side of middle age, and I've never seen a decade where the peoples' civil rights have been stripped to such a degree and very few care. It's like we're sedated or drugged. The MSM tells us what to do and think, and we fall in line. They set the agenda of the issues being talked about, and that's what we discuss. We're being programed so that when the corporate military contractors move in, they will be met with very little resistance. I don't think we know how little we really know.

As I write, the financial channel is talking about the explosion in the drone industry; with 30,000 drones ordered for the skies of America. This is to keep the population safer? IMO, the Nazis didn't loose the war - they just relocated.

"Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people. They fix, too, for the people the principles of their political creed."
--Thomas Jefferson

Let's take a look at this for a couple of days. The posit that Nazis moved to America in Operation Paper Clip and perhaps other operations. And what happened in the rat lines in Italy with the pope signing passports to let nazis travel to South America.

I think there is a story here big enough to sell a paper printed in a basement for $.60 cents a copy.

So both Russia and USA recruited German Scientist and germany Nazi Technocrats in 1944. What id the Nazis do for the USA.

1) Create Private banking
2) Create at least 2 Space Rocket Programs
3) bring intelligent nazi managers into the US government to raise the standards of average work.
4) Create a Financial Legacy that would destory $10 Trillion in the Global 2008 Financial Crisis.

There is a guy named Mark Dice that wrote a conspiracy book recently and was on Late night radio. He was talking about Operation Mockingbird and how CIA was controling world media with planted storied. The Church Committe found huge Bribes going on including in the USA.

I think he was saying how after Bobby Kennedy was killed they signed a prewritten Law to expand the Powers of the Secret Service. And there is alist of Powers expanded after all kind of Crisis in the USA... inlcudeing 9-11. But also there is ahistory of government causing events to happen like Operation Gladio, and it sounds like MLK assassination...

It is stranger than fiction. You can't hardly make this stuff up. ANd there seems to be a string of truth through government operations/ the finger prints of power.

Two of the most obvious similarities between Nazi Germany and contemporary America is:

1 - Leaders in both regimes seized dictatorial, criminal powers by using the pretext of responding to terrorist-led catastrophes.

Hitler and his Nazi underlings blamed the communists for the burning of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933. By fanning anti-communist hysteria the Nazis and Nationalists won a bare majority of Reichstag seats in the elections of March 5. After the communists had been barred, and amid the anarchy of storm trooper murder of communist and other opponents, the Reichstag voted to give Hitler total dictatorial powers.

In precisely the same manner, the capitalist cabal has blamed the 9/11 bombing of the twin towers on "terrorists." In 2012, Erick Holder, the Attorney General declared that U.S. Presidents have dictatorial powers, including the power to order the assassination of American citizens, without any due process (indictment, conviction, sentencing, etc.)

2 - The Nazi regime required the shutting down of all mainstream newspapers and radio outlets and the establishment of a propaganda bureau, to make certain that all news sources supported the regime's policy of invading foreign nations.

Today the MSM (radio, TV, and Internet sites) are willing collaborators, supporting the present strategy of attacking foreign nations to bring about regime change and to 'sell' the governments' agenda to it's people through propaganda and lies.

Expecting to see currency crash, gas rationing, planned power outage, and 'give me your papers'. When military contractors pull daughter from car at checkpoint, then the 'willfully blind' will have regrets.

I think this is a really big question. . . How can the silent majority that's awake feel confident enough to speak up. In national polls by major news outlets, 40-50% of Americans said they supported Occupy Wall Street. That's huge. And I can't imagine they feel much differently about the big banks and corrupted bought off politicians than they did a year ago. .

I hear ya !! I think it's already starting. Hell, I went grocery shopping today and it was a real mad house. Bread gone, milk gone, shelves were really starting to empty. When I got to the register, the cashier said it's been a crazy day. I asked "what's up?", she said " Everyone's afraid that nothing will be left if congress pushes us off the fiscal cliff over the weekend, so they're stocking up."

People are acting this way with just the perception that something MAY happen. What will happen when they REALLY blow the economy up?

Yes, I stand corrected and I also agree. Get money out of politics. This is an idea that liberals, conservatives, Independents, Teabaggers, Libertarians, Socialists, and damn near ALL other Americans in between can agree with. For now, this main concept is exactly what OWS should be about to bring the majority into the fold.

Good. Everyone keeps talking about Iceland. What's so special about what's going on there. Didn't they get pummeled economically by corporatists? (2 minute video clip here from opening scene of award-winning film Inside Job http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_96zE8minOg&feature=youtube_gdata_player ). But that was a few years ago. Do you have any more current info / links that will help bring me up to date and better understand situation in Iceland now and how they achieved it?

"Our only solution is to take to the streets and quickly" -and to get beat up by the police?, pepper-sprayed in the face and arrested by the thousands? so the MSM will talk about it for a few minutes, ignore us and move on?...then what? Been there done that. How will that solve anything?

Believe me, I'm with you. I just think we seriously need some new ideas, new tactics, new ways to mobilize/organize and express our People-Power. It's Time for The Movement to evolve into something much more powerful and much more effective than getting beat up and arrested in the streets for "media coverage". The MSM is owned and controled by the 1% and they don't give a shit about us anyway. We need to realize that. This is David against Goliath, but Goliath is not going down so easily like he did in the story. We have already hit him with the rock from the sling-shot and all it did was piss him off. What next? Another rock? A bigger rock?

The sad thing is, it's We The People who are actually The Giant (The 99%) and we're allowing ourselves to be bullied and dominated by an evil-little-boy-with-too-much-power (the 1%). We could easily overthrow the-evil-little-boy non-violently at any time, simply by Non-Compliance and Non-Cooperation. We could so easily take the-evil-little-boy's power away and leave him harmless and impotent. We could so easily reduce the evil-little-boy to what he actually is "an-evil-little-boy". Why don't We?

The majority of The People actually agree with most of the basic ideals of The Movement, but so far that same majority are not willing to do much of anything about it...other than to obey and to submit. America continues to be raped-up-the-ass by an evil-little-boy...and for some weird reason, we can't figure out how to get out of the doggie-style position.

The only viable reason to protest that I can see, is to bring more people on board. Short of that, we're just pissing into the wind because as you say " they don't give a shit about us anyway"; so begging them to do the right thing is fruitless. They only represent and care about the ones that contribute big time money to their campaigns. That's why they're passing these oppressive and deceptive laws - To put us in our place. They are prepared for resistance.

The other great point you make is that we are actually "The Giant" in this fight, so we DO have leverage; but what we need to do is waken the "Sleeping Giants".

I've been thinking for a long time on how to do this. We all have ideas on what is the best way forward. Personally, I'm in favor of a participatory democracy ( http://osixs.org/Rev2_menu_commonsense.aspx ), but I can honestly say that most aren't. Therefore we must find something that EVERYONE can get behind.

I think the common concept that conservatives, liberals, teas, libertarians, greens, socialists, and pert near everyone else can get behind, is "GET THE MONEY OUT". So IMO, that's where we should put our efforts. We should focus like a laser beam on that one issue. (Brother 'Builder' helped me come to that conclusion today - bless his heart :)

As far as being raped-up-the-ass by an evil-little-boy, doggie-style; I can only state that the evil-little-boy must have some girth, cause it damn sure hurts!

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery." --Thomas Jefferson

By legalizing the government lying to the people; how can anyone believe a word that comes from these crooks? I think the reason it's coming to a head, is because people are starting to realize that there's more to the news, than just what the MSM reports. Too many people that I talk to, have never heard of drones over America, indefinite detention, or The Big Lie. I can guarantee that when I'm done talking to them, they have expanded knowledge; but still, many (to their peril) refuse to believe that the government would ever create such laws. It coming to a head, as people slowly awaken.